


The Strongest Man in Ikebukuro

by ivoryandhorn



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: 100-1000 Words, Character Study, Gen, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-02
Updated: 2010-10-02
Packaged: 2017-10-12 08:50:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/123095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivoryandhorn/pseuds/ivoryandhorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Truth is a broken sword and legend a steadfast shield.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Strongest Man in Ikebukuro

**Author's Note:**

> A character study kind of thing. A character _aspect_ study kind of thing. I wrote it pretty fast -- but then, it's pretty short.

The strongest man in Ikebukuro.

The strongest man in Ikebukuro.

The strongest man in Ikebukuro—

  
\---

Izaya officially left Ikebukuro for one reason: he found a much better deal for office space in Shinjuku. Also, the view of humanity was better.

However, this was a lie, or at least a limited truth, and some would say that there wasn't much difference between the two. There was another reason. Izaya would say that it was because he wanted to see fresh faces, get in touch with humanity as it lived outside the bubble of the Ikebukuro he had grown up in, but this, too would be a lie. The true answer would be that Izaya was getting tired of Shizuo.

Or rather, he was getting tired of the traces Shizuo kept leaving behind. To walk the streets of Ikebukuro was to see Shizuo's unmistakable stamp on every inch of the city. Here a pothole gouged out by the lamppost torn from its place, there the debris of a vending machine that was _supposed_ to have been cleared out two months previous, but hasn't been for reasons known only to bureaucrats and Izaya himself. Buildings and floors dented and re-dented by the unfortunate targets of Shizuo's rage, and then paved and re-paved over by long-suffering public officials. And of course, there were the people.

The strongest man in Ikebukuro threw park benches like baseballs!

The strongest man in Ikebukuro once punched a man so high he flew through a thirtieth-floor window!

The strongest man in Ikebukuro wore the bartender's outfit because he was _actually_ a zombie and those were the clothes he'd died in and that was why he couldn't ever be hurt!

The strongest man in Ikebukuro—!

The strongest man in Ikebukuro…

The strongest man in Ikebukuro was a patchwork of word of mouth, panic-blurred memories, grainy cellphone photos, and shaky snips of video shot on stylish digital cameras. The strongest man in Ikebukuro was as much of an urban legend as the Black Rider, and as much of an icon, with his bleached hair and bartender's suit. To most, the strongest man in Ikebukuro lacked past, present, future, name, fears, desires, home, associates. The strongest man in Ikebukuro needed none of these things. He simply was.

Izaya prided himself on always knowing more than anyone else, and it rankled him to know with the same certainty that he knew he loved humanity that not even the most carefully detailed expose of Shizu-chan's most humiliatingly human moments could ever put a dent into the legend of _the strongest man in Ikebukuro._

It was only made worse by the fact that Shizuo seemed wholly unconscious of his effect. It would have been better, Izaya felt, for Shizuo to have known what he was doing, to have intent and purpose and plan. At least then he could have had the pleasure of a _worthy_ rival. Instead, he had Shizu-chan—all mumbles and sullen slouches, trying hopelessly to stamp out a fuse that had been born to blow. Izaya would have taken pride in the fact that a not insignificant portion of the permanent property damage that scarred Ikebukuro had been incurred by him, were it not for the fact that no one else ever remembered it—only the rage of the strongest man in Ikebukuro.

Izaya could craft as many futures as he wanted, each one a delicate domino web of relationships and interactions that he could never quite know would work out as he required but knew always would, and all of them would still be indelibly marked by Shizuo's careless hand. Machinations cannot erase the patched concrete and asphalt left behind. He could scheme for a thousand years, play a million games with rules of his own devising, and none of it, none of it, none of it, _none of it_ would ever erase this simple fact:

That Izaya dealt in truths and Shizuo was a walking legend and truth was a broken sword and legend a steadfast shield.

Or, to put it another way—

That long after his role in the whole affair was forgotten, the people who walk Ikebukuro's streets will continue to tell the story of how the reason this road barrier over here, this one right here, is newer than the others is because the strongest man in Ikebukuro tore it out of the street with his _bare hands._

That story will live on even as the reality that produced it withers away, as fruit survives the vine that bore it. And with it—

  
\---

The strongest man in Ikebukuro.

The strongest man in Ikebukuro—

The strongest man in Ikebukuro will live on when Orihara Izaya is dust.


End file.
